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Stung by a Stereotype

Some college athletes feel they are seen as more brawn than brain

April 21, 2017 10:00amBrian Hendrickson

ARNEL REYNON / SECTION 127 AND SHUTTERSTOCK ILLUSTRATION

Annual measurements continue to show that college athletes either meet or exceed the academic performance of their student peers. The recently released NCAA Social Environments Study, though, suggests many student-athletes still perceive that long-standing stereotypes persist. More than 30 percent of male student-athletes in all three divisions believed their student peers assume they are not good students because they are college athletes, while better than 1 in 5 in Divisions I and II believed their professors felt the same way.

NCAA Social Environments Study

Since the last study on social environments taken in 2012, the percentage of student-athletes who felt that professors assumed they were not good students because they were college athletes was higher by at least 5 percent among these groups: